The Technology Department worked to set the stage for transition and growth in 2013, a common theme around the Burning Man organization the last few years.
As you’ll read in our Web Team Report, we rolled out our gorgeous new Gallery after the 2012 event. This robust tool helps us celebrate and develop our online archives. It will be an important publishing tool in future web initiatives, while being a great way to share our culture with the world. Please submit your stunning photos and artifacts from Black Rock City, Regional events and other affiliated activities!
Just in time for ticket sales in January of 2013, we launched Burner Profiles, providing a centralized login, dashboard, and streamlined workflow for our users that set the stage for a more unified Burner community experience moving forward. There is a great deal of excitement around the future possibilities with the Burner Profiles platform and you are sure to hear more about them as we progress.
As you’ll see in the Engineering Report, we revamped our Volunteer Questionnaire to be a part of the Burner Profiles dashboard, and implemented new team management systems using a hosted solution from Shiftboard, replacing two antiquated systems and giving a much-needed technology boost to our volunteers and volunteer coordinators. Work continues to fold in additional teams and new functions.
We are continuing our efforts to integrate and consolidate our community data. It is a slow and sometimes tedious process to extract data from antiquated disparate systems and then to integrate it into an evolving centralized view. The work is starting to pay off as teams like Media, Legal & Government Relations and Regional Network managers have adopted and greatly benefited from a revamped process and shared data. In addition, our non-profit development and fundraising staff are able to more effectively engage with community members.
The Operations Team remains busy, with our most successful year for the playa network so far, supporting our move to a new office in the fall, and working to rebuild our server architecture to be more robust and scalable using mostly cloud-based services.
In 2014 we will be focusing on an exciting new website for Burning Man, furthering our work on Burner Profiles, strategizing technology sharing with our global network, and migrating our Technology Team into the non-profit entity.